News Gathering

The Denton school district said Friday it would move six portable classroom buildings to the Selwyn College Preparatory School to help the school reopen after a fire ravaged the main building Thursday.

The district is making available two portable buildings each from Ginnings, Houston and Rivera elementary schools along with some desks and chairs, spokeswoman Sharon Cox said. The ground was too wet to move the buildings Friday, but crews hoped to finish the job by early next week, she said.

The private school was forced to cancel classes Thursday and Friday after a fire destroyed a 50-year-old building that housed kindergarten through third grade and administration offices. The building was vacant when the fire started, and no injuries were reported.

Selwyn administrators hoped to resume classes Monday.

Denton ISD officials were relocating some programs that used the portable buildings, but Cox said the impact on operations would be minimal.

Dallas-based Balfour Beatty Construction, the company that built most of the district's schools in the past decade, is donating labor to build decks and ramps once the portables are set up at Selwyn, Cox said.

The Denton County tax office has published a list of which law firms collect delinquent taxes for area cities, school districts and other taxing bodies.

The list shows that Denton-based Sawko & Burroughs, of which Mayor Mark Burroughs is a partner, represents many of the county's largest cities, including Denton, Flower Mound and Lewisville. The firm's 23 listed clients also include the Denton, Argyle, Lake Dallas and Little Elm school districts.

Burroughs' contract with the city of Denton was an issue in each of his two mayoral campaigns and many of his other clients were well known, but he had declined to provide a full list. Burroughs said this week he was reluctant to release a list without his clients' consent but acknowledged the contracts were public records.

"It's their information to give out," Burroughs said, referring to the county tax office. "It doesn't bother me."

The Round Rock-based firm of McCreary, Veselka, Bragg & Allen has the most clients of the five law firms listed, with 54. The clients include Denton County and multiple area cities, school districts and special taxing districts.

The other firms collecting delinquent taxes in Denton County are Linebarger, Goggan, Blair and Sampson; Robert E. Luna P.C.; and Perdue Brandon Fielder Collins & Mott LLP.

Here are the county documents I referenced in my Sunday story on Wellington Trace in Oak Point. 4504_001.pdf

The League of Women Voters of Denton will host a review of proposed gas drilling regulations written by the Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group at 7 p.m. Thursday in Room 178 of the UNT Environmental Sciences Building at West Hickory Street and Avenue C.

The speaker will be Adam Briggle, a UNT professor who led the advisory group.

For more information about the event, click here. Read more about the DAG report here.

The next installment of UNT's faculty lecture series will focus on natural gas drilling, including the proximity of wells to schools and parks, the university announced Tuesday.

The UNT Speaks Out event is set for 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 8 on the first floor of the Willis Library, 1506 W. Highland St. in Denton.

Scheduled panelists are: Adam Briggle, assistant professor of philosophy and religion studies; David Sterling, chairman of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the UNT Health Science Center's School of Public Health; Chetan Tiwari, assistant professor of geography; and Nathaniel Smith, a senior geography major.

Smith and Tiwari are expected to present Smith's analysis of the distance between gas wells and schools and parks in North Texas and whether the distance differs according to the socioeconomics of nearby residents.

The event comes as Denton continues to rework its gas drilling regulations to address health and environmental concerns. Briggle, who led the Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group, is expected to discuss the "not in my back yard" attitude people sometimes display when new development is proposed close to their homes.

The university also announced other panel discussions scheduled for March 8 on "Women in the 21st Century" and April 24 on the 2012 presidential primaries.

The city of Denton launched a new website today to gather more feedback on issues facing the community, including a possible smoking ban.

EngageDenton.com will serve as a virtual town hall where residents can offer ideas and suggestions to help officials make decisions, said Katia Boykin, a supervisor in the city planning department. The three initial questions focus on smoking, community gardens and historic preservation.

"We don't expect for this to take the place of public meetings," Boykin said. "We just expect to get more of a voice from people who do not or cannot attend a public meeting."

Planning officials initially wanted the site to help with their ongoing review of the city's comprehensive plan, but other city departments quickly saw the potential benefits, Assistant City Manager Fred Greene said.

"Well, it looked so good," Greene said. "And it can answer a lot of questions that the city constantly has in desiring input from the public."

Look for a full story in Tuesday's newspaper or at dentonrc.com. In the meantime, you can visit the site and weigh in on the three topics.

After a week off, Denton's gas drilling task force will resume its work on air quality regulations Monday night.

Click here for the agenda, which also includes a discussion on potential water quality regulations.

The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 215 E. McKinney St.

Read about the last meeting of the task force here. For general information, visit the city's task force web page.

The leaders of the local Republican and Democratic parties have weighed in on Gov. Rick Perry's exit from the presidential race today.

Denton County GOP chairwoman Dianne Edmondson said she was surprised Perry didn't do better in the polls.

"He is a solid candidate," Edmondson said. "However, as he himself would admit, there were some things in the beginning of the campaign that didn't go very well. He got in late and didn't do as well in the early debates as he did in later ones, and people couldn't overlook that."

Phyllis Wolper, chairwoman of the Denton County Democratic Party, said Perry's exit was overdue.

"I truly didn't believe from the beginning that he actually had the kind of organization or backing that would have gotten him the nomination," Wolper said. "I would have expected that he might have gotten more support from evangelical groups, but I think one of his main problems was that the other players had been on the national scene for a very long time and it is very difficult to catch up to that."

Perry abandoned his bid for the Republican nomination and endorsed Newt Gingrich. He released the following statement on his campaign website:

"Although I will no longer be on the campaign trail, I will continue to champion conservative principles: a Washington that is humbler with a federal government that is smaller, real tax reform that can spur economic growth, and a renewed commitment to fiscal discipline so the future of this country is not mortgaged on a mountain of debt.

"As we return to Austin and the Texas I love, I am proud to continue as governor of this great state and will work every day to make Texas a better place to do business and create jobs for all Texans."

Look for a full story in Friday's newspaper and at dentonrc.com.

New water-use rules in Denton would start next month under a proposal headed to the City Council.

Residents and businesses could water lawns and landscapes no more than twice a week under Stage 1 of a revised city drought plan, which is expected to go to the council-appointed Public Utilities Board for review Monday. A council vote is set for Feb. 7.

City staff members want to enact the restrictions in mid-February but will discuss implementation dates with board members Monday, said Jim Coulter, water utilities director.

Denton is revising its four-stage drought plan to more closely align with one in Dallas, where a mandatory outdoor watering schedule took effect last month. Look for a story with more information on each drought stage in an upcoming edition of the newspaper and at dentonrc.com.

To catch up with our past coverage, click here.

I helped write a story for Saturday's paper about Missouri-based O'Reilly Hospitality Management working to revive a dormant project to bring a hotel and conference center to the University of North Texas campus.

I sought comments from the company involved with the project in 2009, John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts of Springfield, Mo., but didn't get a response before the story went to press. Today, Hammons sent a statement confirming it was no longer pursuing the project.

The statement from Justin Harris, senior vice president and general counsel for Hammons, appears below in its entirety:

"John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts is focused on maximizing the performance of our award-winning portfolio of 78 hotels in 24 states with over 5.4 million gross square feet of meeting space. New construction is not a priority for us until financial markets significantly improve. Instead, we continue to invest in strategic improvements to our existing portfolio."

By the way, O'Reilly company officials still haven't returned our calls.

The Corinth City Council canceled its regular meeting this week citing a lack of items for the agenda.

Krum has postponed its regular meeting, which would have occurred on the MLK holiday, to Jan. 23.

The United Way of Denton County raised more than $1.8 million in donations and pledges during its shortened 2011 campaign, officials announced Friday.

The 2010 campaign raised about $1.96 million but was extended by two months, meaning donations from the first two months of 2011 were counted toward the prior year's campaign.

The 2011 total "will facilitate a tremendous amount of good work in the community over the next 12 months," said Gary Henderson, who was hired in May as the organization's president and chief executive officer. "I'm pleased with this result, but we're not satisfied with staying at this place."

The local United Way broke with tradition this year by not announcing a campaign goal after a shortfall in 2010 left less money for partner agencies and caused two partner agencies to break away.

The organization will continue to focus on needs and causes, not fundraising goals, in future campaigns, Henderson said.

"That's what donors want to hear about," he said. "They give to the faces, the issues and the problems their neighbors are facing."

Look for a full story in Saturday's edition and at dentonrc.com.

Hundreds of Denton Municipal Electric customers were without power for nearly an hour this morning after some equipment failed near Audra Lane, a spokesman said.

The outage affected about 750 customers in the Mingo Road area between Audra and Texas Street, near Texas Woman's University, Brian Daskam said. Power was restored at 7:36 a.m., he said.

Daskam blamed the outage on a malfunctioning jumper, a piece of equipment that joins two sections of overhead line.

A report by three public health professionals is urging Denton city leaders to consider the health effects of natural gas drilling as they rewrite the city's drilling and production ordinance.

Studies have offered a "mixed picture" of how gas exploration is affecting air quality in the Barnett Shale region, but there's enough evidence to justify a cautious approach, according to the report by Jessica Gullion, Naomi Meier and Rhonda Love.

The authors wrote the report to educate the public on health concerns associated with gas drilling, said Gullion, a medical sociologist at Texas Woman's University and a former chief epidemiologist at the Denton County Health Department.

Meier is a doctoral candidate at the University of North Texas Health Science Center's School of Public Health. Love is a retired university professor in public health.

You can read their report here: HealthandNaturalGasOperations.ReportforDentonCityCouncil.doc. Look for a full story soon in the newspaper or at dentonrc.com.

Denton City Council members informally agreed today to form a citizen committee to study a ban on smoking in restaurants, bars and other workplaces.

Details of the committee, including its exact duties and makeup, will be decided at future meetings. But council members stressed during an afternoon work session that they want to hear from a broad range of people including bar owners, public health experts and other residents.

The action came after several residents appeared before the council last year asking the city to pass a comprehensive smoke-free workplace ordinance.

Cities and states across the country have passed similar smoking bans. In Texas, state Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, has pushed for a smoke-free workplace law for years, but the bills have died in the Legislature.

After Sunday's article about a possible correlation between human activity and the strength of severe storms, Bell offered additional information about particulate matter and how it affects the atmosphere:

The explanation for how aerosols affect storms is a little subtle: pollution doesn't necessarily cause more storms to form; it makes the cloud droplets smaller in a storm forming in dirty air.

The small droplets rise higher because they are lighter instead of raining out immediately, and, in the east, where freezing temperatures are way above "cloud base", the droplets can make it up there to freeze and (surprisingly enough) release heat in the act of freezing and make the atmosphere even more buoyant so that the moist bubbles of air rise even higher, thus energizing the storm.

The effect on tornados is unfortunately even more subtle: storms dump a lot of cold air as they form, due to evaporation of the rain (that's the cold gust you feel near storms). The cold pool of air below the storm clouds flows away from the storm and can undercut the development of tornados, which depend on a middle-level vortex in the atmosphere sinking to the ground, it's now believed.

The stronger the cold pool, the less likely are tornados. Pollution effects on storms weaken the formation of a cold pool, and so tornado formation is not as inhibited as for storms forming in clean air.

A city board voted unanimously today to endorse a plan to reroute a proposed Denton Municipal Electric transmission line away from homes on Hercules Lane to mostly open land along Loop 288.

The Public Utilities Board recommended approval of the plan, known as "Option C," which DME announced as its preferred route last week, spokesman Brian Daskam said. The plan now goes to the City Council for a public hearing and vote Tuesday night.

The plan covers the northern segment of DME's northeast Denton power line project, which involves rebuilding transmission lines and replacing wood poles with taller steel poles from the Denton North substation at Hercules and Locust Street to a substation off Spencer Road to the south.

The council voted in November to approve the project's southern segment, connecting a proposed new Kings Row substation off Loop 288 to the Spencer-area substation, but withheld approval of the northern route because of neighborhood opposition. That route, known as the "yellow route" or Option A, would connect the Denton North substation to the new Kings Row substation mostly by running the power line along or near its current footprint down Hercules.

Residents along the route urged the city to spare their neighborhood by routing the line along Loop 288, where there is less development.

I received an email from a reader who recently questioned his local telephone bill. He lives south of Ponder, but not in town limits, so it took a little while to convince the customer service people of his new carrier (CenturyLink took over Embarq in his area) that he was being charged sales tax improperly.

Every city in the area charges sales tax and you don't just pay that tax when you shop at a store. You also pay that tax on your utility bills, including trash, electricity, telephone, and internet service.

If you live outside of city limits, check your old bills to make sure you are being charged the tax properly. If you can prove to the utility company that you have been assessed the tax improperly, negotiate with them. That credit can go a long way.

We had five years of old electric bills when I questioned the city tax they were charging us in 2006 -- and told them we had been customers since 1996, so it was probably set up wrong to begin with. They credited our bill back to the year 2000 (something about Y2K and a computer change, so we let it go) ... because it ended up being a summer of free air conditioning for the family.

Then I told my neighbors they should check for themselves. Depending on how long they were customers and how far back their own records went, they got hefty credits, too.

If you live outside town limits, check your bills carefully. You may be overpaying.

Denton Municipal Electric announced late this afternoon that it would support a plan to reroute a proposed northeast Denton transmission line away from homes on Hercules Lane to mostly open land along Loop 288.

DME officials said they were recommending approval of the plan, known as "Option C," based on public feedback and because it would place the line farthest from homes and planned development.

We'll have a story in tomorrow's paper. You can also read more here.

Two years ago, we told you the story of Tim and Christine Ruggiero, who have become about as well-known as Calvin Tillman, the former mayor of Dish, in their struggles living close to Barnett Shale gas facilities.

Their peaceful country life on the Denton-Wise County line was forever altered when Aruba Petroleum assumed between three and four acres of their 10-acre ranchette for a gas well site.

Last year, the couple protested their property valuation with the Wise County Central Appraisal District and the appraisal review board agreed their home was worth a fraction of its original value.

The couple eventually sued Aruba Petroleum -- the first Barnett Shale operator to be fined by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for air quality violations -- and while they will not disclose the outcome, this week they announced that they have moved "off the shale."

The Ruggiero family now lives in Pilot Point.

Tim Ruggiero said he will continue to be active in shale gas issues through ShaleTest, a nonprofit group he co-founded with Tillman to help residents secure low-cost environmental testing.